Monday, November 24, 2014

For many more years than not, I haven’t eaten four-legged
animals, but somehow fish, I could eat. So when yesterday, in a small market, displayed
in crushed ice, a pink grouper’s head attached to maybe half a body caught
my eye with its clouded one, I
asked the affable young butcher for
a pound, or a bit less.

As I talked with a retired English teacher wanting red
snapper, who told me there was no teaching anymore unless it was in a private
school, BANG! The butcher slammed a mallet down on the knife perched on the
bone of the grouper.

He laid the slice of delicate pink flesh on the scale.

“Only half a pound,” he said, disappointed.

I couldn’t stand witness to another hacking.

“I’ll take it; it’s fine,” I told him and turned back to the
English teacher and said,

“I went to a private school. Quaker.”

She touched my arm and said, “Then you are educated.”

The slab of fish leaked a bloody spot in the refrigerator overnight. Though
I had lost my taste for the idea of it, I laced it with garlic and spices,
broiled it, and gave it to the dog who, the breeder had said, was the dumbest
she’d ever raised.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Being
in nature is a succession of moments that imprint all my senses. Every
walk, every paddle, every buzz, rustle, call, chirp, and squeak informs
my creativity as an artist and writer. Just as we take in and process
information differently, so do my experiences translate differently even
within my own brain and subsequent output.

The
part of me that loves detail--knowing the exact conformation and
coloration of feather and petal, genus and species--picks up pencils and
pens to render what qualifies as scientific illustration.

Baby Bunny by Beth Surdut

Another
part of me reacts to color viscerally, judges art on its “edible”
appeal, meaning that my first and strongest impression of colors is that
they are so juicy I want to lick them no matter what they represent.

There
are places—a moss-covered forest trail, a dappled stream, a shadowed
slot canyon, an expansive night sky-- that invite me to walk in and lose
my edges until they shimmer as I become part of them. There is art that
does the same.

The subtlety of gators by Beth Surdut

What
does this say about being outside in nature? My essence is re-colored
by each experience. We are already truly integrated if we permit
ourselves to pay attention and experience it. Sometimes that means
putting down the canvas, the camera, the journal so we can just Be Here
Now. I have read that some athletes who wear aGoProcamera
are mortified when they forget to turn it on, that not catching the
bighorn sheep on film negates the actual experience of having seen them.

I
am not only an observer, but also as a kind of chemical experiment, a
magnet or perhaps a portal that, when exposed to natural beings and
surroundings, takes in elements that reorganize and morph into something
both new and familiar in the forms I produce.

I contend that

Art is not the “other”

Outside is not the other

We are not the other

We are vital, integrated, shining particles of this world

Breathe
in the breath of the world and then see what you breathe out.

I
have the good luck to be able to express verbally and visually what
swirls and glimmers in and out of me. I am there to see with my eyes, my mind, my
memory, not somebody else’s. What comes of experiencing nature betters
me more than any indoor classroom situation. I am embraced and expanded
by the particulars. And I get to share that with you.

Friday, October 31, 2014

When you listen to raven, that
iconic trickster and smartest bird, you really will become smarter when
you think! This image is "The Reason Why" drawing from the series
"Listening To Raven." You can learn more and purchase museum quality signed prints on lush paper
featured at www.listeningtoraven.com
The award-winning illustrated book-in-progress is still open for your
personal raven encounters! Send inquiries to info@bethsurdut.com

Click on the image below to purchase a Smarter When You Think Raven Mug

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Silk prayer tallit "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding" Beth Surdut

Reading about Tyler Nordgren and glorious night skies in Nautilus magazine's blog, I thought of this shawl I painted of skies over Bandelier National Monument, and a full moon walk I was privileged to take there.

Walking with the ancients by moonlight, I joined the
footfalls treading this dirt for 10,000 years. While waiting for darkness, I consulted
with a resident raven who listened to my questions as the moon rose over these
ancestral pueblo dwelling places.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Raven, Coyote and I walk together often,discussing who really created the Milky Way. Come
with us.

Breathe
in the desert that sits in your mouth in the middle of the night, begging for
water.

Listen
to that moment when the compass stays in your pocket and you are, like all
else,

a mote of dust sparkling in the sun.

With ravens as the catalyst, the non-fiction essays, shared stories, and intricate drawings in Listening to Raven
invite readers to observe, with unbounded curiosity, the wildlife that
flies, crawls, and skitters along with us in our changing environment.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Da plane! Da Plane!
Mural in Zen time is a three-walled Florida courtyard where I had some slapstick moments—a full can of lavender paint did the hula on my head, covering my hair and just about everywhere else while I was dive-bombed by persistently angry bees, one of which stung me before I whacked it and hastened its next incarnation. This is, after all, a tranquil meditation space.The trained circus poodle on the property only spoke Russian and, like much of the population in retiree paradise, had lousy short term memory. Each time he saw me it was a new adventure of feints and barks.

I finished highlighting the whirring propellers, thinking about Joseph Albers Interaction of Color (the only life-changing class I've ever taken), and realized that the care I put into the shadows and light on the bamboo might well be overshadowed by the plane, placed at my client's behest. (I wonder if the famous luminist painters of the Hudson River Valley School--Cole, Church or Bierstadt--were asked to throw in Rumplstiltskin?) Hiking through bamboo and eucalyptus groves in my former Hawaii home is a delicious memory, but the experience of piloting a small plane, especially through sunset, gave me delirious contentment.
100 degrees-- a dreamy
bamboo forest emerged from my brush and overheated mind, blue streams
and mysterious marshes surrounding a zen garden. This is Florida, where a concerned stranger who loved my
artwork told me I'm going to burn in hell for eternity. Now I know
why Bush won here, why 18,000 votes disappeared and very few really seemed
to care. Brain fry.

In my usual 'I can do this' approach, I attended ground school after I'd flown a few times. Learning the intricacies of engines and navigation was, for me, like dancing, loving the feeling, and then being told that I had to memorize all the bones in the foot and learn how to repair them if I wanted to be a really great dancer. I realized that the next time I hire someone to take me into some remote spot in the Amazon, I could fly the plane if the licensed pilot keels over, but I won't have a clue where we're going. It may really be about the journey, not the destination.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

My heart opens with joy every time I drive the mountainous road between Taos and Embudo. The rift gorge is still aflame with golden cottonwoods leaning over the Rio Grande, and I wonder how to paint the emotions of this day.

Glory fades as the road eventually widens and flattens into the traffic lanes and ratty median strips of Espanola where a dead dog lies bloated in the sun. Some kind of cattle dog, the spotted fur still visible—Australian or maybe Blue Heeler. The truck in the lane next to me passes, the silver trailer hitch glinting and wobbling so much that I consider honking to tell the two guys in the truck cab that something is wrong, but this being Espanola, I better be damn sure, so I speed up for a closer look.

It’s an aluminum scrotum sack...about the size of a bull’s, complete with bulging balls and little indentation marks like rippled skin, just swinging low to the rhythm of the road.

My potential Good Samaritan act foiled, I returned to wondering how best to describe the sound of wind moving through the cottonwood leaves like dry rain, or how to paint the flash of pinon jays lofting in blue notes of surprise.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

I
was one of 10 artists in Santa Fe chosen to participate in the
national Herradura Art Barrel challenge. The local judges at
the event Nov 3 chose a Day of the Dead pop art piece and gave the winner 10,000 dollars.

Elemental/Transcendental: The Goddess Returns

As
pieces of the barrel fell away from my jigsaw, I spotted a rusty
horseshoe nailed to the fence. “For good luck,” I said, and set the herradura in my studio next to the silk I painted — material fine enough for a celebration at Hacienda San José del Refugio, the original home of the Herradura tequila estate.

This
piece raises a glass to transformation and transcendence. Fire, perhaps
from the heated breath of El Dragon, transforms agave and oak, shapeshifting into a
seductive libation coveted around the world. Here, Mayahuel, Goddess ofAgave, rises from her death, her lover’s devoted tears mingling with hers to add magical elements found only in exceptional tequila.

However, there is more to this magical story of love, death and resurrection...

Mayahuel's Sorrow by Beth Surdut

How to stuff a dragon and raise a goddess:

The story begins with the fertility goddess Mayahuel being killed by a jealous rival--- chopped into little pieces! Mayahuel's lover,
Quetzalcoatl, cried over her remains for days and continued to return
to the place where she was killed. The gods pitied him and gave his
tears magical powers that transformed Mayahuel into the blue agave plant
from which the finest tequila is made. But in the process of
making that coveted elixir, more destruction ensues.

First the agaves are cut and mutated by fire.

Oak
trees are cut down, made into barrels,and the barrels are charred on
the inside to impart a smoky flavor to the tequila that comes only
from the Jalisco region of Mexico, where there is said to be a
black 7-headed dragon living underground. No one has actually seen
El Dragon, or if they have, not lived to ascertain the number of
heads.

El Dragon tries to escape the studio

In order to keep the sugar content high in the
agave, the flower stalk is cut before it can bloom into a myriad of
tiny yellow flowers.

Out of all this violence and
destruction, the feminine divine rises. I started with the hard jagged
edges of agave-- cutting, sanding and painting each stave of the
barrel. (oy, such shmutz!) I painted El Dragon on silk, then stuffed
him and placed him a in the barrel along with the shadows of two
more of his heads. The lower column and the tall one are painted
silk that I attached to heavy lampshade material. Each column is
lit with tiny lights on the inside.Mayahuel's head is covered with
cut pieces if silk, wired ribbon edged with god beads, and plant
material sprayed with gold glitter. There are also translucent
golden faceted beads to emulate the agave flower and droplets of
tequila. even as she rises, transformed,

she cries golden tears.

Much
thought, work, adhesives, and money went into this piece, so I'd like
as many people as possible to see it before it gets auctioned for
charity.. Please pass this along, post,
tweet, or call out the link from the rooftops.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Raven appears as trickster and bringer of magic in stories that fly through time and territory, his cleverness ultimately providing humans with surprising benefits.

Enduring creatures, Ravens appear in the Lascaux cave paintings, the Bible, Babylonian flood myths, Norse, Celtic, and Native American stories and more. Raucous, rowdy, defiant, sensual and smart, their cleverness is admired by scientists, their mystery acknowledged throughout world cultures.

A jewelry maker from Boston, graduate of the esteemed North Bennet Street School, gave a print of this Raven to a dear friend in New Mexico who knew the pleasure of sitting with her dog named Bear and talking to ravens. Soon after the dog died, a raven feather appeared on the front stoop. The owner believes that the feather is a message from Bear.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

A hummingbird flew into my studio, landing on the wide window sill where she fluttered between the glass and a
wood cut-out of two flamenco dancers. Her emerald wings winked at the edges of
the woman’s ruby skirt.

To save her, I cupped that tiny bird made of air and magic in my hands.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

A mug of early morning coffee at the ready, I am about to open
my laptop when a miniature storm hits the garden.. Dry
earth the color of a brown paper bag flies through the air as the largest of
three resident rabbits digs a third tunnel right through the daffodil bulbs. Another
rabbit hops in to graze under the bird feeder about 7 feet away. Digger Rabbit, who appears
to be chewing a daffodil bulb, gives chase. They race across open space so dry
the weeds crackle under their feet, and out of my sight. Digger soon returns to
resume excavating as does the intruder rabbit, who hides in the shadows of a
low spreading juniper. In just those few minutes that I turned my eyes away, Digger
completely covered and camouflaged the new entrance and is aggressively chasing
a very large ground squirrel. Ka-whap! With a body blow and a ninja rabbit kick,
the squirrel is momentarily airborne and as soon as it lands, Digger chases it.
Turns out Digger is protecting her subterranean babies who emerge right by my
feet as I sit outside soon after sunset.

Four inch desert cottontail photo by Beth Surdut

Had I
leafed through the newspaper or tunneled my way through a book about animal
behavior, or checked my messages, I would have missed seeing 3 adult rabbits of
varying sizes, 2baby bunnies about the size
of the palm of my hand, 2pairs of plump
scaled quail, 1 pair of grey and white doves, many red-breasted house finches
and their dun-colored mates, 2robins,a curved-bill thrasher
couple , 2 broad-tailed hummingbirds, 2 chickadees, 1 goldfinch, 1 piñon jay, 1
small woodpecker, 1 raven, 1 juniper titmouse, 2whiptail lizards,2 fence lizards, 1 stinkbug, and a canyon
towhee.
All I had to do was pay attention.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

La troca (the truck) is as iconic here in New Mexico as Trickster Raven-- the older rounded forms made by man mimic the languid curves and patinas of this high desert that color my soul.

The Listening toRaven~Drawings, Myths and Realities series of intricate drawings and stories is the current focus of this blog and my professional life. From Alaska to Australia, Croatia, Canada, and all over the map, people contact me with raven tales.

In Alaska, Mark has been caring for ravens and eagles for the past 18 years. Although there are certainly professional nature photographers with admirable patience, skill, and talent, this man’s love is uniquely communicated through his actions and photographic documentation of his avian friends. His photographs and the stories he tells me gave flight to this drawing as well as The Ravens of Truth and Memory which nods to the Norse God Odin’s ravens.

Mark writes: I must say I think your drawing of Raven is the best that I have seen yet...

Raven flew over the office of the apartment complex where I worked. I put some meat out for him and soon he came down and got it. Next, he brought his partner and although she was much more tentative they both started stopping by each day. I started to develop a call that sounded like when the male Kushka called the female Feathers. After time, when I called, they would come down off the mountain. That summer, I noticed that they brought their fledge down to my truck and from that time on I became their babysitter.

After 10 generations of fledges, I believe the original couple moved on and now all their children come back in the winter to live nearby cause they know I will have food for them if times get bad.

Speaking of la troca: I carried Martha Egan's collection La Ranfla (The Ride) to the mechanic's while he fixed my brakes-- I read the entire collection, nodding and grinning, wondering if I should go looking for a literate cowboy and a good cash crop, when Guapo brought me to tears right there in a chilly waiting room.

When your friends back East ask what New Mexico is about, send them this book. Then get them out here, drive them around in a troca, show them the land and sky and a good taqueria, reading them Jim Sagal's Unexpected Turn if you can find a copy.

Friday, December 14, 2012

I’ve been best friends with a pagan for 30 years, so you’ll
understand how unsettling it is to see her dressed up as Mother Superior, a
role so unlike the range of wildly experimental and classic pieces in her repertoire.

Actress Lynn Sharp Spears Climbs Every Mountain

Considering Lynn Sharp Spears is a professional actress/singer/director/set designer/make-up artist (that’s a short list) and has the voice of a powerful fallen angel, I know
why she is currently receiving standing ovations in The Sound of Music in Baltimore.

Nuns and art also convene in a life-sized cabinet carved
by Massachusetts-based Nancy Carroll, whose business is aptly called Luna-C
Arts.

Artist Nancy Carroll gets into a nun's drawers

I profiled Nancy for The Middlesex
Beat in 2002:

There’s nothing quite like a classic black dress
and red high heels to make a
statement, especially if the black is a nun’s habit and the red shoe seems,in this case, to be on the wrong foot.

“There’s a full human being in here,” said artist
Nancy Carroll as she approached her
sculptural cabinet, “Bad Habits.” She put her hands on the cold-water faucet knobs of the nun’s breasts and when she
opened the doors; dance music
started to play. Inside was all pink and fluff-- pink Marshmallow Fluff®.

“Go ahead,” urged
Carroll, as I gingerly pulled open the nun’s drawers edged in carved ruffles and filled with memorabilia of
Carroll’sexperience as a novice. (She did not become a nun.)

When she tallies up
the time involved in making her basswood nuncabinet,
she figures 330 hours of planning, designing, carving, joining and painting and, oh yes, 53 years.

I find the idea of being pigeon-holed into any
particular style antithetical to being an artist and a person. Although their unique abilities to portray nuns made the news for both Lynn Sharp Spears and Nancy Carroll , each artist continually expands into uncategorizable realms linked by
curiosity about the next step forward. When someone asked an NPR correspondent to describe what I did, she responded that I was "a creative polymath." I think that describes us all--without boundaries. As Nancy
said, “There’s a full human being in here.”

The people in Colorado are my neighbors. The firefighters
are my heroes. I just want to help.

The
fight to save lives, homes and forest took a tremendous toll. Three
lives and more than 600 homes were lost, including several belonging to
firefighters. More than 250,000 acres were burned. Proceeds from the
online auction will be used to replace equipment for the Poudre Canyon
Volunteer Fire Protection District in Colorado, near the worst fire
damage and the area where the charcoal was collected. By
nature's power and whim, I could just as well have been in their
situations.

I
think speaking up, stepping out in some way is important. I watched
the Las Conchas fires encroach on Los Alamos last year here in New
Mexico and wrote about the habitat destruction in Orion Magazine.

For
my ongoing Listening to Raven series of drawings and collected stories
of science and spirit, one of the myths I've come across is that Raven
was a beautiful white bird who brought fire to humanity.While
carrying the burning firebrand across the skies, Raven's white feathers
became irrevocably blackened by the smoke as he flew. Other stories,
especially the trickster tales, put Raven in dire circumstances that he
really shouldn't survive. Yet he sometimes literally suffers terrible
wounds, puts himself back together, and goes on, as we do-changed, but
anticipating the next phase of life.I hope a viewer sees and feels a piece of their own story in The Survivor."

Sunday, September 16, 2012

The glorious carpet of golden aspen and evergreens accessed at Aspen Vista, just above the city of Santa Fe, is lift-your-heart gorgeous. Hikes from there can be an easy stroll or leg-burning and literally breath-taking challenges starting at over 7.000 feet and climbing upward.

Rosh Hashanah brings the anticipation of another year as I create a custom tallit that contains a thank you-- Blessed are you, Adonai, Ruler of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.

Friday, August 31, 2012

“We heard that if you split a raven’s tongue, it’ll talk
like a parrot,” said the beautifulgirl
studying my raven drawings. My breath caught and fluttered in my throat like a trapped
bird. She’d already told me that she used to steal raven nestlings in Ruidoso
where she was raised up. Then she cut her eyes at me, “but that didn’t sound
like fun, so we didn’t do it.”

All images and text copyrighted. Use only with permission.

Listening To Raven

The Listening to Raven series of intricate drawings and stories is the current focus of this blog and my professional life. Please email info@bethsurdut.com for pricing of originals and embellished prints, additional images, exhibition and licensing. Gator Girl Adventures are found in the older posts.

Radio Adventure featuring Beth Surdut

ShareThis

Artist and Writer Beth Surdut

Visual storyteller, creator of Listening to Raven drawings and stories. Professional artist and writer--illustrations,paintings,prayer shawls tallit),healing
head scarves, product design,culinary art from the kitchen,stories and
commentaries for print and radio media.